Against Celsus 6.7

And many things may be found in Moses and the prophets, who are older not only than Plato but also than Homer and the invention of writing among the Greeks, that are worthy of the grace of God given to them and full of greatness of mind; and they did not say such things, as Celsus supposes, because they had misunderstood Plato. For how could they have heard a man who had not yet been born? And even if someone applies Celsus's argument to the apostles of Jesus, who lived later than Plato, see whether it is not plainly unconvincing to say that Paul the tentmaker, and Peter the fisherman, and John who left his father's nets, handed down such teachings about God because they had misunderstood what Plato says in his letters. Celsus has already harped many times on our being required to believe at once, and he says it again as though it were something new beside what he had said before; what we have said on these points is enough for us. But since he also sets out another passage of Plato, in which he says that wisdom shines upon those who philosophize after his manner “as they use questions and answers,” let us show from the sacred writings that the divine word too urges us to dialectic: in one place Solomon says, “Instruction that is not examined goes astray,” and in another Jesus the son of Sirach, who left us the book called Wisdom, says, “The knowledge of the senseless is words that have not been examined.” Kindly refutations are, then, rather to be found among us, who have learned that the one who presides over the word must be able “to refute those who contradict.” And if some are negligent, not training themselves to attend to the divine readings and to “search the Scriptures,” and, according to the commandment of Jesus, to seek the meaning of the Scriptures, to ask God about them, and to knock at what is shut in them, that does not make the word empty of wisdom.